Woody Jenkins World View...or, What's Wrong w/America?

[AnnInLa]

http://www.righthandthief.blogspot.com/

Woody tells us what's "really" wrong with America

In February of 1995, Louis Elwood "Woody" Jenkins spoke at a Council for National Policy meeting. A former CNP president, Woody was a candidate for U.S. Senate at the time, and he used his speech to pour out his heart and get to the core problem with this country, as he saw it. Here is a long excerpt from his talk. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't help interjecting a few comments in strategic places.

What is really wrong with America?
...
We must look back at the history of our nation to see what has happened to us. We came here as immigrants, people searching for a chance to breathe free, people who risked everything, who gave up the security they had in Europe and elsewhere, gave up the homes they had there to cross treacherous oceans, looking for a chance to own land, to have their own home, to be their own boss, to pursue their own dreams. And they arrived here. They became farmers and small businessmen. But do you realize that they all, virtually all of them, were the masters of their own destiny?

As late as the year 1900, the majority of Americans owned their own businesses, which in most cases was a farm. People lived on farms. They had their own dreams. There were no limits. They were not employees. Employment was a rare thing. Americans viewed employment, in their historic memory, much like serfdom.

There was something special about being a farmer. The mother would raise the boy until he was five, six or seven years of age. Then the boy would go with the father to plow the fields, to work with the animals. They were together all day, hour after hour, year after year. And the father would talk to the boy and share with the boy everything he believed. He'd tell the boy what to think about God, what to think about his country and its political leaders, what to think about other men, and what to think about women and how to treat them. Over the years, the boy would come to believe everything the man believed.

For generation after generation in America, we had great stability because we passed down, from one generation to the next, the wisdom of the past.


(Comment: Civil War, Reconstruction, Gilded Age... those were good, "stable" times because families got to pass down their "wisdom".)

Then the Industrial Revolution came along and the man, facing all of the risks of being a farmer, knowing the crops could fail, insects could ravage him and that there was the chance of losing everything every year, had a chance to go to the city and take a job. He didn't want to do that. He didn't want to give up his dream, but it seemed like the right thing to do. So, by the millions after the year 1900, we flooded to the cities and factories to become employees. Today over 80 percent of Americans are employees.

Left behind was the boy. He didn't have a man to tell him all day what to think about God, what to think about the country and its leaders, what to think about other men and how to relate to and how to respect and treat women. He was left with the mother who had already taught him the womanly things she had to teach him.


(Comment: Right. Women can't teach religion or politics or respectful behavior to their boys.)

Big business had to do something about that right away. So we saw the public schools formed mainly to get the boys off the streets and give them something to do.




In 1960, when I was 13, few women with children were in the work force. Most mothers were there for the boys when they came home from school. Today the vast majority of women with children are in the work force.

And do you know who's raising the boys? It's not the fathers. It's not the mothers. It's not that wonderful Christian school or the public school or the parochial school. It's not the philosophy of the church or the school board.

The boys are in kindergarten, day care centers, preschools and schools of all kinds. But who's raising the boys?

It's the other boys -- from age two and above -- who transmit to the boy their knowledge and information and world view. Telling him what to think. Someone has our children by the throat -- it's the other children! We see boys and girls 14 and 15 years of age who are peer-dependent. But the peer-dependency didn't start then. It started when they were two, three, four, five and six years of age -- when they were institutionalized at an early age and turned over to the other children.




Here's what has happened. We've broken the vital chain. No longer is the wisdom of one generation passed on to the next.

If you want to have influence with a boy, you have to spend time with him. The more time, the more influence. The less time, the less influence.

I believe this with all my heart: The only way we will save America, the only way we will turn around America, is once again to make the home the center of living, of work and of education. Only then will our values and our wisdom be transmitted to the next generation.


Comment from blogmaster:
So, Woody wants to update the model of a family farmer nation with a new and improved "family home business" version. Only then, when home becomes the "center of living, of work and of education", can America return to its good ole days, when traditional family "wisdom" was passed down from father to son, and the authority structure was preserved. Only then can we pursue our dreams and be free in this 21st Century.